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Jay Bilas calls South Carolina SEC’s best last-place team ever
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Jay Bilas was on the call Wednesday for the opening SEC Tournament game between No. 16-seed South Carolina and 9-seed Arkansas.
For followers of South Carolina basketball, it was all too familiar. The Gamecocks played the Razorbacks close to the final buzzer, but came up short, falling 72-68 to the Razorbacks.
Late in the 2nd half, Bilas mused that South Carolina is likely the best last-place team the SEC has seen.
“I can’t imagine we’ve ever seen a team in last place as good as South Carolina,” Bilas said. “I don’t think there’s ever been one.”
The 2024-25 campaign was a rough one for Lamont Paris’s team. The Gamecocks went 10-3 in nonconference competition but struggled in SEC play. In the regular season, South Carolina went 2-16 against SEC teams.
In SEC play, many of South Carolina’s losses were close losses, similar to Wednesday in Nashville. The Gamecocks lost by just 3 points (66-63) to Auburn, the team that won the regular-season SEC title and could receive the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
There were other close losses for South Carolina against Vanderbilt (63-66), Mississippi State (65-60, OT), Texas A&M (76-72) and Ole Miss (72-68).
Most painful of all may have been the Florida game, a 1-point loss (70-69) in which the Gators took their first lead of the game with 4.8 seconds remaining.
It’s on to 2025-26 for the Gamecocks. They’ll look for better luck in close games.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
